Wednesday, February 11, 2009

How To: Get you significant other to play

I fairly recently got my fiance to play WoW. She was very much the WoW hater before this time. How did I get her to play. Im going to explain what I did so that maybe someone else can benefit from this. There are many people out there that have significant others who absolutely hate the game. They say "It is stupid" and "Why do you choose a game over me".

First thing, your significant other doesnt really need to have a background in gaming, but it certainly helps. My fiance loves Super NES as old as the damn thing is. If she was bored, she would sit and play Super Mario World or Mario Kart for an hour or two.

Step 1: Let them know that it would be a lot of fun to play with them, and a nice way to spend a little extra time together. From the beggining, make sure you let them know that after they have played a bit, if they are still completly not interested, that you will drop it. They do not want to be badgered constantly about it.

Step 2: Free trial account. This is a much better bet for getting them to play. Letting them know that they can play the game for free while they decide if they like it is a plus. If they are already apprehensive about playing, they will mostly likely scoff at paying 20 bucks for the game and then the possibility of 60-70 for the expansions and 15 bucks a month after that. You can do RAF which will make both of you level faster, which will also be a nice selling point.

Step 3: Introduce them to something they find entertaining or interesting. So far, my fiance loves pets and the achievements. She also rather enjoys all of the shiny numbers that pop up when she hurricanes a group of mobs. For some people this may be picking flowers and for others it may be PvP (probably not right off the bat unless they were some pretty harcore gamers previously). Making them laugh in game is also a plus as it adds to the entertainment. Some of the things that made her laugh for me were:

a) Aggroing a bunch of mobs when I ran thru an area. It looks silly having a train of 5 mobs following you, but it servers more that this reason. It also keep them from aggroing mobs, getting knocked off of their mount and killed. This would certainly be a damper on their fun.

b) Using my mouse to spin like a mad man when I jump on my mount. It looks absolutely ridiculous, and she still asks me to do it till this day.

c) Emotes are also fun. Assuming that the person is your significant other, you can do your own personalized emotes by typing /emote and then the description. Depending on the emote, you may also make them blush 0_0

Step 4: Dont stress them out. Regardless of how good you are at the game, they will not be nearly as good. They are going to aggro thing, die, and possibly get you killed. It is all part of the learning process. It will be frustrating at time, but remember back to when you were a noob and how hard it could be at times. I would not recommend doing 5 man dungeons depending on their class/spec. Healing and tanking can be cause stress. Especially so for someone who does not really know what they are doing yet and have strangers in pugs being rude to them. Yelling is BAD.

Step 5: Let them know that you guys are a team. This seems corny, but people like to feel important. In my case, she actually is important in game. Not only does she help kill stuff, but she heals us and my pet when it is needed. This leaves very little down time, and makes things a lot smoother.

Step 6: Let them get the sparkles. Let them loot everything. If you need quest items, you will eventually both have to get them and once they have all of theirs, they generally can't pick up anymore of them. There is something fun about looting, and it can help add to the enjoyment of experience.

Thats is it for now. If I can remember any tips, I will post them up. Hope this is helpful for someone!

15 comments:

Now once you get her into Northrend we can start working on having ourselves a dedicated 5 man group. We have a couple tanks available in you and I. Andy has expressed interest in healing. And Kev has finally made some progress on his hunter.

I figure we will be hitting Northrend this Saturday. She should get to 68 by then since she in only 1.5 levels from there and the gear upgrades will be coming FAST. Ill run my Druid with her thru Borean and my Pally with her thru Fjorde most likely. Then back to the Druid for Dragonblight and beyond.

Great tips! And those are the types of tips that helped me get my parents to play. I had a second account I wasn't using much so I let that be their trial account. We took my computer up to their house when we visited for Thanksgiving. They watched me, I showed some of my screenshots... then asked them to roll toons, "just for the heck of it."

My husband was luck (I think). I've always been a gamer. Although he started playing WoW about a year before I did, I never had a problem with him playing, as I had other games (non-MMO) that I was playing. I'd watch him sometimes and had to gauge the learning curve before I started a trial account.... and the rest is history!

Regardless of how good you are at the game, they will not be nearly as good.

I'm assuming that part is just for when they are getting started... since it is possible they may match your level or surpass you! :)

@Syranna: Of course I meant right now. If she keeps playing with me and starts theorycrafting and such, it is very feasible that she can surpass me (atm she is actually better than I was by a mile at the same amount of time played).

@Gnomeageddon: I must admit that my reasons for getting her to play were mostly selfish :)

@Tessy: That is the thing about WoW. Most of the time, no matter how much you dislike it, if you give it a try, you will at least like it if not love it.

"Dont stress them out. Regardless of how good you are at the game, they will not be nearly as good. "

I had to laugh at this. I got into the game because of my bf. I have beat him in numerous duals from level 20 up. He has a hard time with quests where you control a robot, dragon, giant, etc whereas I have none. I got to 80 first, learned how to gear and spec first and was the first to go through heroics.